Research On Moral Functions Of Religion In America

With China's reforming and opening, while there have been the great achievements in Socialist Modernization Construction of our country, there appear some moral problems. Through the research of moral education in foreign countries, we can take advantage of their useful experience and build a moral education system which can adapt to the demand of era and social development, this is a major subject we moral educators must be faced with.America is an opening country with different values and at the same time it has the strongest color of religion culture in western countries. Moral education of religion, as one of the traditional educational forms in western countries, is regarded highly and widely in the highly-civilized America as well. Religious education in America has formed a historical relation to its moral education. Religion serves as the source of national spirit and spiritual power, and continuation and development of civilization in America is connected with the supporting of religion.On the basis of the description of targets, approaches and characteristics of religious education in America, the roles of which are analyzed emphatically. The paper thinks that religion in America plays roles in behavior guidance, spiritual power supporting and social adjustment. There is no doubt, however, there exist some limitations that can never be ignored. These limitations include misleading the value judgment of life, inhibition of multi-culture development. And all of these above can be traced to its history, reality and religion itself. At last, according to the practical conditions of our country, some helpful experience of religion moral education in America can be learned from and some thoughts to improve effectiveness of our moral education are put forward as well. These thoughts include: the moral education should be based on national condition of one's own, belief education should be the key to the moral education, enrich of contents should be the emphasis of the education, educational forms should be the guarantee of the education as well.